


Written In Stone

by Ias



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Angst, Ficlet, Fluff, Gen, Grief/Mourning, The Angels Take Manhattan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-16
Updated: 2012-10-16
Packaged: 2017-11-16 11:10:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/538801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ias/pseuds/Ias
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor copes with the aftereffects of The Angels Take Manhattan. "I believe that lovers should be tied together/thrown into the ocean in the worst of weather/left there to drown/left there to drown." (A Perfect Sonnet" by Bright Eyes), prompt via margo_kim.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Written In Stone

Sometimes the Doctor reads their history. He knows it's cheating, really, but he's never been much good at playing by the rules. After surfing the solar flares of the Searing Circle, he looks them up in a phone book. Still wringing the water from his socks from that fiasco with Juan Ponce de León, he spends a few hours flipping through old newspaper clippings until he finds the one where the Ponds won some kind of award for community service. He smiles at that. Good old Ponds, never happy to just leave things the way they are. He thinks maybe he taught them that. He thinks maybe he gives himself far too much credit. 

After trekking through the singing forests of Serillia, he finds himself back in the graveyard. He doesn’t think he meant to come here, but he’s here now so that’s that. He finds the grave he’s looking for and sits down, his back to the headstone, because he never put any stock in that age-old adage anyways. Amelia and Rory Williams. They’ll always be the Ponds to him. His fingers stretch out on the grass and dig down into it, and as always he finds himself amazed at how little there is keeping them apart. Six feet of dirt. Seventy years. He knows that somewhere, in one tiny insignificant stretch of time and space, the Ponds are still alive. It’s a small comfort, but a comfort all the same. 

The headstone is a cold reminder at his back, like the world needs to present some kind of proof that they even existed at all. The Doctor doesn’t need it. The Ponds made their mark on the world, plainer than any letters in stone, just as they made their mark on him. It was seared into him, forever, a beautiful brand. He presses a hand to his chest, feels the rhythm through his shirt. Two heartbeats. One for each.  
Goodbye, Ponds.


End file.
